Pharmacies have traditionally received telephone calls from patients, prescribers (physicians, nurses, physician assistants, etc.), insurers, and other parties. With the patients, the pharmacies receive calls from them for a variety of reasons. For example, the patients may call a pharmacy to request that a prescription be filled, to inquire if a prescription has been filled and is ready to be picked up, to request that a pharmacy employee call a prescriber's office, to inquire about a medication or an illness, or for a wide variety of additional reasons. The prescribers may also call a pharmacy for a wide variety of reasons, however the prescribers most commonly call the pharmacy to order a prescription for a patient. The call volume experienced by most pharmacies is very high in relation to the number of pharmacy employees staffed at any given time. Therefore, it is very important that the telephone calls are directed to the pharmacy employees in a manner that is as efficient as possible. This increases the overall satisfaction of the patients, prescribers, and other parties calling the pharmacy.
Many systems have been commercially developed to distribute a large number of calls to an organization's employees. However, these systems have primarily been directed to call center applications and do not take into account the specific needs of a pharmacy. Specifically, no systems to date have been developed that take into account the unique skill sets of pharmacists, technicians, and other staff members when distributing telephone calls to increase the overall workflow of a pharmacy as a whole.